Antagonista Manifesto

"When injustice becomes law,resistance becomes duty."

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" -- Mario Savio

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Welcome to Anything that defies my sense of reason.... Class antagonism of a New World Order.

....because words will always retain their power, offer the means to meaning and, for those who'll listen, the enunciation of truth, and because being sleepwalked into fascism is not an option.

To confront ideas that radically alter our perception of the world is one of life's most unsettling yet liberating experiences.

Throw away your ambitions for membership to the socially acceptable position of wage slave.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers." -- Article 19

Words of Wisdom

"Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience… Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem." - Howard Zinn

"If the truth can be told in a way so as to be understood, it will be believed." - Terence McKenna

"The eternal fight is not many battles fought on one level but one great battle fought on many different levels." - The Antagonist

"Besides, I think it's time to abolish politicians entirely and let everbody participate in self-government via Internet. We needed representatives in the 18th Century, because we couldn't all go to Washington. Meanwhile, times changed and our "representatives" have sold us out to the corporations, as we in the majority party all agree, whatever our differences in other matters. And we don't need "representatives" anymore; we have the Net technology to represent ourselves." - Robert Anton Wilson

"There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but, in the end, they always fall - think of it. Always." - Mohandas Gandhi

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in times of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expedience asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And a time comes when man must take a stand that’s neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it’s right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face." — Michel Foucault

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world." — Octave Mirbeau

"We have given away far too many freedoms in order to be free. Now it's time to take some back." - John le Carre

“We need to work like the Zapatistas do, like ants who go everywhere no matter which political party the other belongs to. Zapatistas proved people can work together in spite of differences.” - Anna Esther Cecena of the FZLN (Mexican support committee of the Zapatistas)

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." - Albert Einstein

"The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you." - Immortal Technique

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." - Stephen Bantu Biko

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." - Mohandas Gandhi

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought". - John F. Kennedy

"There is no general legal duty to assist the police or to obey police instructions." - Rice v Connolly [1966] 2 QB 414

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." - George Bernard Shaw

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - Albert Einstein

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you... then you win." - Mohandas Gandh

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell

"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance." - Leonard Schapiro

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.” - Benjamin Franklin

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Dr. Martin Luther King

"There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress." - Howard Zinn

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." - George Orwell

"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the virtue nor the wisdom to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; And to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." - PJ Proudhon

"It's only subliminal if you don't notice it." - The Antagonist

Public Private Partnership

UK PLC Saving Banks

27 March 2009

Visionary, ethnobotanist, entheobotanist, writer, linguist, shaman, philosopher, psychonaut and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna, speaking in Seattle -- at the time of the infamous anti-capitalist inspired Battle of Seattle -- spoke the following words and advised in no uncertain terms, "Culture is not your friend". McKenna was of course talking about corporate culture, the type which seeks to hold hostage and keep from you sounds, shapes, patterns, colours and images that would otherwise be free for all to share.

What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanising values that are handed down as control icons.

This is something -- I mean I don't really want to get off on this tear because it's a lecture in itself -- but culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.

Yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important. But the culture is a perversion. It fetishises objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanise themselves by behaving like machines - meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue and Hollywood and what have you.

How do we fight back? It's a question worth answering. I think that by creating art -- art -- man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon, it's some kind of cannibalistic dema urge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected.

By putting the art pedal to the metal we really, I think, maximise our humanness and become much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machines.

Terence McKenna - Culture is not your friend

The following is, in all likelihood, exactly the sort of thing to which McKenna was referring when he suggested the creation of art as part of the fight back against corporate culture and the mass psychology of fascism:

Presented here is a great interview with Professor David Harvey, as aired on New York Public Radio, in which he talks about the state of various aspects of the world including the immense and almost unmentioned consolidation of class power that is occurring in the world of States, banking and finance. It is worth noting that while there are some efforts being made to consolidate working class power, these efforts would appear to be somewhat less concerted and considerably less well organised at the transnational level than those of the banking, financial and ruling classes. However, there is still time and we have all the tools for doing so already to hand.

The interview with Harvey includes some discussion of the way in which solutions to the permanent crisis of capitalism lie not in falling back on previous historical models for running things, but rather in novel, realistic, legitimate and achievable new models that can create a more fair, just and equal society in which the needs -- rather than the selfish wants, and desires -- of everyone, not just the rich, ruling classes, can be realised.

So, for example, at least as far as digital content goes, we already have in existence the New Economy of Community, established and operating without let or hindrance. This is despite the continued evil machinations of global media oligopolies whose existences are entirely dependent on the wholesale robbery of both their customers and the artists on whose backs their media empires have been built. Of course, such machinations by corporations would not be possible were it not for the almost total compliance of the Corporatist state lackeys responsible for passing regressive and repressive legislation (usually referred to as 'governments').

Anyway, back to the original reason for this post, the interview with Professor David Harvey. The full interview is 24 minutes long and you can listen to it below, or download an MP3 copy for off-line listening:

While you're listening, you may also wish to contemplate the following words, recently added to the Antagonista Manifesto in the sidebar:

Throw away your ambitions for membership to the socially acceptable position of wage slave.

25 March 2009

The "It" referred to in the title of this post is, of course, bullsh-it.

Recent political power surges have ensured the appointment of Josef Goebbels as minister for news and propaganda from beyond the grave. Residents of prison ship Britain wake to find themselves living simultaneously in the maelstroms of the occupied territories of Iraq, the occupied territories of Afghanistan and the occupied territories of Palestine, all without the hassle of having to sell their homes in challenging economic times.

All this marks the launch of the long time in the making Contest 2 'anti-terror' strategy of the government, as widely publicised by the housing benefit thief Home Secretary, J'Accuse Smith (no relation to housing benefit thief Employment Minister Tony McNulty).

The publication of the report coincides with a new police campaign to urge Londoners (and nobody else?) to report 'suspicious activity'. Gordon BrNWO was banging on about it in last week's Sunday Observer. For his efforts, as if he wrote the article in question, BrNWO received a good and entirely justified verbal kicking right until the bitter end.

Goebbels' new campaign to reinstate blockleiters comes with a few simple posters issued by the simple police as the cross media marketers are only too aware that people busy losing their homes, savings, pensions, cars and just about everything else they've ever worked for, with no end in sight, probably don't have the time to read lengthy government reports designed to distract from the misery of the material reality of their existences.

What the government hasn't [sic] failed to notice in its haste to train 60,000 people to recognise what the ruling classes like to think of as terrorists -- through the use of posters featuring Aryan folk in the foreground, complete with Aryan babies, while a couple of lesser, darker-skinned human beings mill about in the background because, despite everything, they must appear to matter too -- is that the 60 million residents of the UK already learned to recognise terrorists and terrorist activity when they see them.

Handy clues like the mass-murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is simultaneously a bit of a giveaway and a clincher and it will stand up in an International Criminal Court of law a bit better than black pepper, hair dye and chemical impossibilities, so pretending that hairdressers and chefs and "hardcore antagonists" are terrorists just isn't going to wash any more.

04 March 2009

"A stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet. I'm sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years. Maybe until the war criminals have been brought to trial."

-- Ken Loach

A recommendation like that, from one of the best and most admirable film directors in history, should be sufficient to pique people's interest.

"In the White House, they weren't thinking of 9/11 as an attack, but as a gift!"

On 23rd January, the political documentary ‘THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY’ was screened worldwide through a network of digital cinemas ranging from Italy to Brazil, from Spain to South Africa. With international press coverage and the support of prominent filmmakers from all over the world, the event shows that the existing digital network is already capable of effectively delivering a complete product on a global basis.

The digital revolution is working at both ends of the chain, the clear beneficiary being the audience in the middle. On one end the exhibitor, faced with dramatically lower costs, can afford to choose from a much wider range of films than those offered by the mainstream circuit. On the other end, filmmakers can now embark in low-cost, hi-quality production with the full awareness that there is a valid, worldwide venue awaiting their product, enabling them to reach a proportionately satisfying audience.

At the same time the astonishing rate of technical improvement by the internet indicates that the full integration of the digital realm is only minutes away. When that happens, the array of possibilities - ranging from downloadable updates for works-in-progress to live, server-to-theater digital feed - will make the existing system so obsolete that it won't even be necessary to fight the restrictions the majors are now trying to impose on digital distribution in a desperate effort to survive such rapidly changing times.

All efforts should be made to support bold events like this. Any steps towards discovering a new distribution method for truly independent films is valuable for filmmakers and audiences alike."

John Pilger, David Halpin, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Lindsey German, Ben Griffin, Dr Nawal Saadawi, Haifa Zangana, Dr Kamil Mahdi, Bruce Kent, and other citizens of Spain, Argentina, USA, and UK, support a Blair War Crimes Foundation to seek signatures for a petition to the United Nations General Assembly and the UK Attorney General, to uphold the UN Charter, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and International Law, and to indict Tony Blair for war crimes.

Time for everyone to play their part in wiping the smug, meretricious grin from Blair's lying, mass-murdering, bastard face, and not a moment too soon. Rather, much too late. Those also complicit in these war crimes should not rest easy either for their time and numbers are almost up too.

Truth will prevail -- is prevailing -- justice will be done, and the world will be a better place for it.

03 March 2009

Recent Reason.... blog housekeeping notes, predominantly as a historical note to self, although regular readers of Reason... may also be minorly interested. Thus far a general revamping and rejigging of the sidebars has occurred, including:

"More than 1,500 people, paying £35 a ticket, attended the Convention on Modern Liberty in London!" Dissent, if you can afford it! #coml

LHS: Updated Get Antagonised to include new Google-acquired Feedburner email subscription facility and fixed 'in The Guardian' link. Also Added on Channel 4 News.

LHS: Added Archivo Antagonista TV with links to posts on Reason where video forms the bulk of the post content. Also fixed embedded video links in posts that had broken over time.

LHS: Added a few more quotes to the Words of Wisdom section, including this gem (Thanks Kier!):

We need to work like the Zapatistas do, like ants who go everywhere no matter which political party the other belongs to. Zapatistas proved people can work together in spite of differences.” - Anna Esther Cecena of the FZLN

Nail A Nobody™

Thanks to the Conspiraloon™ Alliance laboratories, you can now Ruin Those You Resent without leaving your personal computer!

Enter the person you wish to inform on:

Select transgression:

Who would you like to be informed?

Antagonista Zeitgeist

"The country's biggest force, the Metropolitan police || believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light." - The Guardian

"The bombers scattered identity and bank cards around the Tube carriages they targeted before placing their rucksacks on the floor and setting off the explosives. || Although they were damaged to some extent, they [the ID and bank cards] did not show the damage that would be expected if they were on the body of the bomber or in the rucksack, suggesting that in each case they had been deliberately separated by some distance from the actual explosion. || The bombers were not wearing the rucksacks at the time of the explosions, but had instead put them down on the floor of the bus and Tube trains." - The Telegraph

"But it [de Menezes execution MPS trial] was nearly derailed after an armed police raid on the home of a juror's ex-boyfriend in the second week of the case, in which the female juror's baby was taken away." - Daily Mail

"It is no exaggeration to say that at the time of the arrest there was not one shred of admissible evidence against Barot. The arrest was perfectly lawful - there were more than sufficient grounds, but in terms of evidence to put before a court, there was nothing. There then began the race against time to retrieve evidence from the mass of computers and other IT equipment that we seized. It was only at the very end of the permitted period of detention that sufficient evidence was found to justify charges. I know that some in the media were sharpening their pencils, and that if we had been unable to bring charges in that case, there would have been a wave of criticism about the arrests. Barot himself of course eventually pleaded guilty last year and received a 40-year sentence." – DAC Peter Clarke

The 7/7 narrative: "06.49: The 4 men .... each put on rucksacks || 07:14: .... The 4 then put on their rucksacks...." More....

"The [21/7] jury were told a further charge of conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life, faced by each man, was now being left off the indictment." – BBC

"Tony Blair and his family suffered the indignity of having to sleep on the floor and eat an Indian takeaway out of foil cartons on their last night in Downing Street, insiders have revealed." – The Times